


Kept Going, Kept Rolling with Nowhere to Go

by marauders_groupie



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (also a little bit of angst bc that's how i roll), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drinking & Talking, F/M, Romance, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 11:20:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5583874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauders_groupie/pseuds/marauders_groupie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke Griffin meets Bellamy Blake on her third night in Spain and she blames sangria and travelling for what happens after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kept Going, Kept Rolling with Nowhere to Go

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by my recent trip to the Canary Islands and the idea for this story popped up in my head as I was listening to a band playing sad songs and drinking sangria. Unfortunately, there wasn't a hot guy, just a lot of retired people. 
> 
> I apologize in advance if I made mistakes with parts of the dialogue that are in Spanish, I am not a native speaker and feel free to correct me. But I do love Spain, please go to Spain, do yourselves a favor. 
> 
> The title is from Cat Power - Ruin.
> 
> Enjoy!

Clarke meets Bellamy Blake on her third night in Spain. By now she’s lost count of all the towns and cities she’s visited during her soul-searching journey (she’s big enough of a person to admit that she’s doing exactly what every straight white male novel protagonist has done) and she _is_ going to remember what this village’s name is but only after she’s had a glass of sangria.

Which is strong. The sangria a middle-aged waitress serves her is stronger than it should’ve been and it hits her like nothing else ever has, her mind going fuzzy and nearly blank as she watches lights flash and the band setting up their instruments for what will be a night of live music.

Honestly, she came to this unpolished café only because it was the closest to her hotel and maybe she likes the fact that it doesn’t have white tablecloths and fancy chairs but is instead decked in checkered napkins and plastic furniture. She likes it, she’s had a lifetime full of pretentious restaurants in which you were afraid to spill a drop of wine.

There’s a guy, a hot – probably Spanish – guy sitting at the table next to her and he seems so immersed in his journal, scribbling back and forth and flipping pages like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do, that Clarke figures a second of giving him an appreciative once-over won’t hurt.

Except one second turns into a full minute and Clarke’s hazy mind doesn’t register when his deep brown eyes above a smattering freckles (it seems like there are thousands of them, formed into constellations on his cheeks and over the bridge of his nose) focus on her.

It’s only when his lips (the Cupid’s bow making her thumb itch for Clarke to run it over them and lick into the taste of his wine) curve into a smirk that she realizes that he’s stopped writing and is now looking at her.

She is a mess and she knows it full well, with her frizzy, unwashed hair (one plane and four train changes to get her to this place) and cheeks going warm, but she tips her glass in his direction – a moment of liquid courage all that she needs. “Salud!”

The man chuckles, his eyes darting just a little bit lower towards the surface of his table and he nods more to himself than to her.

“Estas sola?”

His voice is deep and low, something Clarke would worry about once but now she’s wearing her shortest shorts, she’s twenty-five and running away without knowing where she’s running to, and the stranger is hot.

She doesn’t understand a word of what he’s saying when he keeps talking. She only knows that his Spanish is doing things to her, things like making her heart beat faster and spinning fantasies of a whirlwind romance in her mind.

It’s sangria. It’s definitely sangria and not the way his arms flex when he reaches for his own glass, smiling with mirth reaching his eyes.

“No te quiero molestar pero este es un barrio peligroso y si estas sola-”

He’s still talking and Clarke is just smiling, obviously the go-to thing to do when you can’t understand shit what the other person is saying. It’s only when he raises his eyebrows that she mutters a quiet, “I don’t even know what the fuck you’re saying but you’re hot.”

His eyes widen in surprise and Clarke freezes.

Fuck sangria. Fuck everything. Fuck this. Fuck that, too.

“You speak English,” he finally says, sounding a little exhausted. “Thank fuck.”

Clarke wants to laugh out loud when he seems genuinely relieved, running a hand down his face and chuckling again, but she doesn’t because this is weird and her whole life is weird.

The stranger just seems nice and really hot, unfazed by the fact that she just told him that he’s hot. Guys usually make a move after that, if a lifetime of watching Raven flirt shamelessly has taught Clarke anything.

This one doesn’t.

And Clarke really, _really_ wants him to.

“Your Spanish is really good,” she tries. It’s pathetic but then again, she’s decided not to care about being pathetic on this trip. This trip is all about figuring out who she is. And sangria is a pretty big part of it.

The man smiles at her, wide and happy, and there’s just something about that innocence that charms her more than his smirk or his deep voice. “Thank you. I’ve been here for months and in a place like this,” he waves his hand around, “no one speaks English.”

A giggle bursts from Clarke’s lips because yeah, she can relate. “I know a couple of things like la cuenta and sangria, por favor.”

It’s really the most she needs to know. How to pay her bill and how to order sangria in a polite manner. It’s not like she drinks anything else; her blood is slowly being replaced by sangria and she doesn’t mind one bit.

The stranger smiles at her. “What I was saying in my incompetent Spanish-“

“Your Spanish is very competent,” Clarke interjects.

“Thanks. But yeah, I asked if you were alone because this is a bad neighborhood and, you know,” he shrugs, “I didn’t want to be annoying but if you’d feel safer sitting next to me, I promise I won’t bother you.”

His earnestness takes Clarke aback, the honesty in his eyes as he offers to just sit next to her so no one would bother her, it’s –

It’s all a little too much and Clarke stands up, wobbling a little as she goes to take her glass. When she nearly trips over her feet on her way to the stranger’s table, barely clinging onto her backpack, his hand darts to the small of her back to steady her and it’s something else entirely.

There’s almost a crackling of electricity in the air, searing through her skin as his palm – large and warm – brushes across the bare strip of her skin on her lower back and Clarke stops frozen in her tracks, staring at the stranger openly.

He looks no less dazed than she does and maybe it’s something they put in the wine here but Clarke takes the free seat next to him on the terrace, wind ruffling his curls and wine melting into words on his lips, and she regrets nothing.

Clarke doesn’t regret the way her hand finds its place on his thigh when she laughs at something he said and she doesn’t regret how warm his touch is in the windy night.

All that she knows is that every time he touches her, something in the air straightens up, folds forward, melts into whatever she wants it to be.

“I love Spain,” she presses out after half an hour of talking about all the places they’d seen. He’s from New York, thirty years old with a history degree but he’s trying to write a novel. The waitress keeps pouring him wine and Clarke sangria with a knowing smile and it isn’t before long that Clarke is lounging in her chair, her bare feet in the stranger’s lap and only laughter bursting from her lips.

It might be magic, it might be Spain and it might be the fact that the man’s eyes light up every time he manages to make her laugh.

“Yeah, I love it, too,” he agrees, the band starting to play just a few feet away from them. Clarke can only recognize a few worlds, something about mariposa – a butterfly, something about love and something about sadness that makes her want to curl up closer to the man.

“Tell me something about yourself,” he says, running his hands over her naked calves and looking like he doesn’t mind the weight. Clarke has walked too many miles for men and women who promised her love but wouldn’t even hold her feet when the day has been too long.

She lies because it’s what she does best, downplays her achievements. “There’s not a lot to say.”

The man shoots her a glance full of disbelief, “Come on, anything. Your first pet?”

“A dog named Sparky.” When he raises his eyebrows, she swats at his arm. “Come on, I was four. You’re supposed to name your dog something ridiculous at four.”

“True,” he grants, taking a sip of his wine. “Here, I’ll give you something about myself. I have a younger sister whose name is Octavia.”

“You’re a protective big brother, then? That’s why you wanted me to sit here?”

“I can’t help it,” he grins. Maybe Clarke is imagining things but it seems like his fingers on her calf just twitched a little. “Octavia tells me I’m a mother hen. That’s why she chased me off after she got married.”

“Is she happy?”

“She is, yeah.”

“Then you did good,” Clarke tells him, her hand going towards her glass to find it empty. With a sad little shrug, she turns back to him. “I’m an illustrator. I mean,” she scrunches up her nose, trying not to think about Anya’s e-mails reminding Clarke of deadlines she is insistent on ignoring, “it’s not going great but that’s what I do.”

“I’m searching for inspiration.”

“At the bottom of the glass?” Clarke asks wryly, wiggling her feet in his lap as the man stares off into the distance. The band is still playing, the wind is still blowing and suddenly, Clarke can understand all the stories of deep shit going on when you’re on a trip. “Fine, you don’t have to tell me. I get it. But because it’s two in the morning and because we’re in Spain, I’m gonna tell you something big.”

The stranger looks at her and Clarke shrugs. “I wanted to be a doctor, right? I started med school and everything because I wanted to help people. My mom wanted me to do it because I’m naturally responsible and I had good grades, but – that’s shit. I wanted to become a doctor because I thought I could change the world or some idealistic shit.”

The man keeps watching her and Clarke doesn’t know why she’s telling him something she’s never told anyone before but she’s still doing it and he’s still listening patiently.

“The only thing I realized was that it doesn’t go that way. And I’ve always been into art and maybe it’s not a noble pursuit but if I manage to make just one person’s day, just because they look at something of mine and say ‘Fuck, she gets it’, then I did good. That’s all I want.”

They don’t speak for a long time after that, the waitress refills their glasses and Clarke takes a lengthy sip but there’s not much else she can say. Her heart doesn’t feel as heavy anymore and even if the man gets up and leaves, she unloaded some of her weight.

Her suitcases may weight a ton but her past is truly what’s weighing her down.

“I get it,” he says after a long time, his hands continuing their slow motion from Clarke’s ankles to her knees – never above, never beyond. After a lifetime of assholes who couldn’t wait to get their hands on her tits, this is a good change. “I don’t have solid advice because you’ve got your shit figured out, don’t you? Even if you’re a little lost right now. The thing is, so am I. I’ve tried my whole life not to be one of those assholes who run after money and step over corpses in the way but I think I was like that back home. I tried to justify it by saying that I’m doing for my sister but there were no excuses left when she started her own life. That’s why I’m here.”

He shoots her a long, loaded look that makes Clarke feels like she’s not alone. It makes her feel exactly how she wants her work to make people feel – _shit, someone gets it_.

And maybe it’s out of that sense of being understood that she tips her glass over as she scrambles to get into his lap and press her lips to his. Ten hours of travelling left her lips chapped and dry and his are no better, but he tastes of sweet Spanish wine and she licks into his mouth, her heart doing a somersault in her chest when he brushes his lower lip against hers.

His hands are warm on her back, her knees sore from the uncomfortable plastic chair but he slides a hand into her messy hair and pulls her closer, like he’s known her for ages and like it doesn’t even matter that they are two strangers in a strange place.

It’s only when the waitress comes to tell them that they’re closing up that Clarke moves away from him, mind blissfully blank and lips feeling swollen. The man is no better and his cheeks are burning up when she runs a hand down them, cradling his chin in her hand.

There’s a dimple in the middle of it and Clarke decides she’s going to kiss it really, really soon.

“I’ve got a box of cigars from the Canary Islands and a room two streets away,” she whispers as the man searches her face. “If you want to.”

He nods so quickly Clarke laughs because he could break his neck nodding that fast. “I definitely do.”

“Yeah,” she smiles, carefully untangling herself from him and offering her hand to help him up. “You seem like you definitely do.”

 

Clarke realizes that she doesn’t even know his name when he has her pressed against the wall in her small room that reeks of ham and cheese.

His lips are trailing down her jaw, lingering on her neck and it’s both his heat and the heat pooling between her thighs that makes Clarke feel like she’s going to burn up any second now. Her hands are scrambling for purchase on his back, thighs winded around his waist tight, and when he stops sucking on her pulse point, she lets out a weak little moan.

“Don’t stop, c’mon.”

He looks up at her, suddenly going very serious as he says in a low and rough voice, that sort of voice you can only get by drinking too much and being too close to tears for many different reasons, “I don’t even know your name.”

And then it hits her like a huge smack in the middle of her face. There isn’t anything she can do to stop herself from laughing and she doubles over, clinging to his shoulders as laughter shakes her entire body. He’s still holding her up and a smile is tugging on the corners of his mouth as Clarke laughs heartily.

She doesn’t even know his name but she knows one or two really difficult parts of his life and he knows the one thing she never dared to speak out loud.

“It’s Clarke,” she finally says as he wipes away the tears that have pooled in the corners of her eyes. “My name is Clarke.”

“Clarke,” he whispers, smiling with his mouth and smiling with his eyes – something she could never get the hang of. “It’s a good name. _Clarke_.”

He sounds like he’s testing it, drawing it out, curling his tongue around the l and the r. It’s like wine, she thinks. He’s saying her name like he means it, like he wants to taste it and she prays to everything that he says it again.

“Clarke,” he repeats, smiling like he intends to stay forever and she knows that he’s not going to do just that, but they’ve got a few hours. Maybe it’s enough. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Bellamy.”

“Bellamy.”

She doesn’t stop saying it, she whispers it into the skin of his chest, “Bellamy” and keeps whispering it as the night grows thicker and darker around them, even her small room turning as vast as the entire universe when he says her name again and again as white hot pleasure washes over her.

Her name in Bellamy’s mouth sounds like it’s magic and she lets herself believe it, if only just for a night.

 

*

 

Clarke falls in love with Bellamy Blake as the band plays songs that tug on her heartstrings and she falls in love with his mouth curled around his thumb where her tears are salty.

Bellamy can’t stop wiping away her happy and her sad tears, licking them clean off his fingertips and Clarke can’t stop thinking about all the other things his fingertips have done in the last two weeks. They sleep a lot, sheets tangling around their bodies and she wakes up in the morning thinking that everything might just be a really good dream that’s going to leave her feeling empty when she realizes the bed next to her is cold.

But it never is. Instead, it’s warm and solid where Bellamy’s chest rises and falls with sleep and Clarke is so, so afraid.

“I’m gonna give them five euros to play any happy song you’d like,” he decides, getting up from his chair. Clarke’s hand on his forearm stops him and he throws her a worried glance.

“Tell them to play me something really sad.”

If he thinks it’s weird, he doesn’t say anything. Really, Clarke wants them to play all the sad songs in the world because she’s so happy and it’s a relief to cry because you have all that sadness in your past and everything is going good now.

Later on, when they’re sitting on the terrace of his apartment, gauzy curtains brushing their faces whenever wind rustles them, Bellamy lights her cigar and asks, “Why don’t people do romantic stuff more often? Why don’t we ever get up in the middle of the night and get on the first bus to tell someone we love them?”

“Does that make sense to you?”

The cigar is too strong and Clarke stifles a cough. Bellamy looks at her like she can’t fool him and Clarke wonders if he thinks that this is going to last.

“Why wouldn’t it? You love someone, you let them know.”

It doesn’t work that way, she wants to tell him. He’s got his head in the clouds even though he’s been through some pretty rough stuff and she doesn’t want to burst his bubble so she doesn’t. Instead, she shrugs.

“We have phones.”

Bellamy laughs, tapping her bare knee as he folds forward. “Yeah, phones. Really romantic.”

“You’re a novelist. You don’t count,” she pokes him in the shoulder, careful not to burn him with her cigar. The cigars were supposed to be a gift for Wells but he doesn’t smoke and it feels really satisfying to light one up after a night like this.

After _a series_ of nights like this; long dinners, good food, great sex.

“You make it sound like I don’t know how the real world works. But I do. And I know that there should be a little more magic in it than just a text saying ‘I love you. What are you wearing?’”

“What’s wrong with sexting?”

Bellamy rolls his eyes. “Clarke Griffin, twenty-five, doesn’t believe in romance.”

“Bellamy Blake, thirty, has his head stuck in his romance novel,” she retorts, raising her eyebrows in a challenge. “Or is it not a romance novel?”

“The novel is currently ten pages of shit not even I can read so – let’s hope it’ll be a romance novel, rather than just nothing.”

“This is Spain, Bellamy,” she reminds him, resting her head on his shoulder as stars glisten in the night sky above them. “Everything is possible here.”

“Yeah. Maybe it is.”

 

They spend days tangled up in each other as mornings shift into afternoons into nights into dark skies with only patches of lights being the stars somewhere far, far away. Clarke lets go of herself in the abandon of warm nights, sheets smelling of lavender and Bellamy’s hands whenever she wishes for them.

It’s too good to be true, she knows – you don’t get this sort of thing, you don’t get to be this happy unless something bad is about to happen, but in this moment, she gets it. She gets Bellamy on the bed next to her, curls tousled and the easiest of smiles playing on his lips.

They’ve gotten to know a lot about each other in weeks that have passed and Clarke doesn’t regret it. She doesn’t regret the image of a ten year-old Bellamy with scraped knees and a gap between his front teeth as he forces bullies to stop bothering some kid on the playground.

It sort of makes sense, everything he tells her and everything she can recognize in the photos he keeps in his wallet and takes out only when he’s very drunk.

She never thinks about what he must think of her because that would mean she’d have to realize that she’s told him so much, more than she should have. And this way, she gets the privilege to be ignorant, to make herself believe that there might be someone in the world who would still want to kiss the same lips that have said cruel words and bring the hands that have had their knuckles split on someone else’s cheeks to his lips, kissing the tiny scar where the back of Clarke’s hand connects to her index finger and which still reeks of the guilt she feels for punching Wells.

“For some reason, Clarke Griffin,” Bellamy says, tucking a stray curl behind her ear and smiling at her softly, fondly, “I think you were a kid with paint smudges on her cheeks and pockets filled with charcoal.”

With the word ‘smudges’ he taps her cheek and she resists the urge to giggle, and with the word ‘pockets’ he places a warm hand on her thigh. Clarke’s legs are bare and the only thing she’s got against the chilly night is Bellamy’s threadbare shirt and his presence in the bed next to her.

Somehow, it seems enough.

“You’re not wrong,” she tells him, leaning into his hand he’s still got pressed to her cheek where it brushed away a strand of her hair. She’s still trying to reconcile all the muscles she’s itching to draw, such a show of strength which would once make her roll her eyes, with the freckles – symbols of innocence, the ones she _can’t_ stop drawing.

“So, what were you like?” he asks, looking honestly interested. It’s exactly for that reason that she smiles in response, tugging him down on the bed for her life story.

“I was a smartass. That sort of kid that sits in the first row and her hand shoots up whenever a teacher poses a question,” she explains, reminiscing the elementary school days. Now it doesn’t seem like it ever happened; it’s more of a movie constantly playing in her head and she thinks back of the small, pudgy Clarke with her nose wrinkling as her mom fixes her braid before she’s about to get out of the car.

She thinks of the small Clarke and wonders whether she’d be happy with who she’s grown to be.

Bellamy chuckles next to her, his breath hot on her ear when he speaks, “Yeah, I bet you were.”

“Well, I was never _wrong_ ,” Clarke defends, not really even needing to. “And I hated bullies, too. I still remember my mom’s face when I came home with bruises on my face one day because I got into a fight. I think she was torn between being proud and being angry.”

“It makes sense.”

“I guess it does. I don’t –“she stumbles over the words she can’t even form in her head and decides to just let go. It’s late enough for nothing to matter. “My grades were always good, I was the student council president, the whole nine yards. But I usually always ended up in detention because I was on this crusade, always fighting against the injustice or what have you.”

“Clarke Griffin, tilting at windmills.”

“Don’t liken me to Don Quixote just yet,” she reprimands, even though she’s oddly fond of the image his words create in her head.

“Come on, you’d look hot in an armor.”

“Yeah, and you could be my Dulcinea del Toboso,” she jokes, turning around so she can face Bellamy. He’s still looking at her with that inexplicable gaze of his; fond, interested, something else entirely. “What were _you_ like?”

“A dick,” he says simply and Clarke punches him in the arm playfully. “You’d have probably kicked my ass and we would’ve fought _a lot_.”

“Why?”

“I thought the whole world was at my feet,” he grins. It’s with the same self-depreciation she feels for her younger self, and she can relate. “I was a smart kid. Not like you, not as _eager_ ,” he says in a mocking tone and throws his hands up in surrender when Clarke glares at him. “I was good at school stuff, I was always strong enough to fight off bullies and basically, it all got to my head.”

“The playground fame?”

“Yeah,” Bellamy rolls his eyes, threading his fingers through her hair and pulling at the ends slightly. “The playground fame. But I guess I realized I wasn’t all that in high school and by the time I started college, my mom got sick and I had to drop the whole act. Octavia needed me, I needed her, and suddenly, it wasn’t all that fun getting drunk in a 7/11 parking lot. None of the talk about booze, sex and partying made sense when there was _real_ stuff going on.”

Clarke can see all of the Bellamys he tells her about; the one with his hands on his hips, victorious between the monkey bars and the swing set; the one whose smirk was enough to charm the pants off of everyone in his high school; the one who came home to a younger sister and wanted to give her the world.

The last one is the one he talks the least about and Clarke thinks it’s not even a big deal in his book. It is in hers because she’d heard him talk to his sister every night, roaming bills be damned, making sure that she’s happy. Clarke had seen his face light up with pride when they got a hold of what’s probably the only public computer in the whole village and there’s Octavia’s article on the front page of one magazine or the other.

It seems ridiculous that he’d talk only about his downfalls when he’s got so many good things he’s done so Clarke catches his wrist in her hand, brings it to her lips for a quick kiss and says, “But I still don’t think you were a dick.” When his eyes widen, she shakes her head. “No. I think you were the dad friend. All cool in leather jackets and shit,” at that he laughs and it warms Clarke’s insides, the crescendo of it, “but also always keeping an eye out for your friends and stealing car keys when someone tried to drive home drunk.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I was also the one who was the designated driver most of the time.”

“See?” she elbows him in the ribs, but snuggles closer. “I told you so. You aren’t half as bad as you’re trying to make it seem.”

 

*

Clarke breaks Bellamy Blake’s heart the morning she leaves. He’s still sleeping when she throws what’s left of her stuff in a bag and makes her way towards the door quietly. There’s a letter on the kitchen table that’s going to explain that her mom called and she has to go back to DC, even though it’s a lie.

The whole truth is – it’s been a month and it feels too real for something that’s supposed to be a whirlwind, dreamlike romance. They get up in the morning together, they travel around together, Bellamy cooks her lunch and when he writes, she works on her illustrations.

Even Anya is happy that Clarke’s started respecting her deadlines.

There’s no real reason to run away except for the fact that Clarke’s heart has gone bitter a long time ago and she knows that it can only go downhill from here.

But she stubs her toe at the end table in the hallway and lets out a loud swear that wakes Bellamy up, and it’s a quiet inferno after that.

“Clarke?” he drawls sleepily, his curls mussed up as he sits upright in his bed, eyes narrowed as he assesses the situation.

Clarke, in his shirt and her pants, shoes in her hand and her bag slung over her shoulder. Tiptoeing towards the door. Early morning.

“Clarke, what’s going on?”

It’s better to break it off clean and quick, like ripping off a band-aid. That’s all there is. There’s no way Bellamy could’ve been serious when he told her that he was in love with her. It’s been a month, it doesn’t happen like that.

Clarke is not going to _let_ it happen.

Because Finn told her he loved her after two months and Lexa promised she’d stay, but both of them left in the end. One of them made her the other woman and the other made her feel like two years weren’t worth anything at all.

So maybe she’s running away but in her mind, it feels like breaking her own heart instead of letting someone else break it. It’s better this way. She only has herself to blame and her pride is intact.

“I have to go.”

His name is on her lips but she swallows it along with the bitterness in the back of her throat. If she says his name, it’s going to make it feel real. This way, he’ll just be a page in the scrapbook.

(Her mind feels like it’s a good thing to do.)

(Her heart, on the other hand, feels something else entirely.)

Bellamy goes very serious very quickly, throwing away the covers and scrambling for his pants. There’s a clang of his belt buckle as he asks, “What happened?”

He’s worried. God, he’s worried and it makes Clarke’s heart sink because he thinks something bad has happened and she needs his help.

When in reality, she’s going to leave him at the bottom of the glass again.

“It’s nothing, I –“Clarke takes a deep breath before continuing, forcing herself to look into his eyes and face what she sees there. Worry, confusion and then, as he begins to realize, sadness. Sadness he masks with blankness soon enough, his features going completely expressionless and cold like the cube of ice he’d run down her back when a night was too hot.

“You’re leaving,” he finally says, giving away nothing at all.

“This vacation has lasted long enough. I need to go back to real life.”

“Real life,” Bellamy repeats.

“I have things waiting for me back home.”

Even to her own ears it sounds weak and stupid. She can only imagine what it sounds like to him. But she can’t do this again, can’t fool herself into thinking that something is real when it isn’t.

“Look, Bellamy,” she continues, “you’re a writer and we’re on a holiday in Spain. Neither of us could’ve believed that this would really last, right? This is just, you know,” she waves her hand noncommittally, “travelling.”

“Travelling, okay, yeah.”

She can almost see his confusion in a split-second before he says, “Well, you have my e-mail address if you need anything.”

“And you have mine.”

“Right.”

Clarke lingers in the doorway for far too long, waiting for him to say what she can see boiling on his lips, words he needs to say and words she both wants and doesn’t want to hear.

But he doesn’t say anything except for “Have a good trip” and she doesn’t do anything except for get on the bus, get on the plane, cry in the airport bathroom in Munich and pass out in her bed in DC.

 

*

“Found your soul yet?”

Raven Reyes is absolutely amazing, the best thing Clarke got out of her nasty break up with Finn. Thankfully, it was Raven and not syphilis. Finn, on the other hand, got his car keyed by what is a force of nature not to be reckoned with – Raven and Clarke teaming up against him.

Now Raven is the one sitting across from her in a café downtown, steaming hot espresso in front of her and a steaming hot smile that Clarke knows means she wants all the details.

“It’s really good to see you, too, Rae,” Clarke shoots back. There’s a moment of quiet before Raven lunges at her, wrapping her arms around Clarke’s sides and squeezing so tight she might break a rib or two.

“Of course it’s good to see you, you asshole! How could it not be? Five months, not a letter, not a postcard!”

“I did send you an e-mail.”

The glare Raven shoots Clarke is severely unimpressed. “Yeah. ‘I’m alive. Speak to you soon.’ Such friendship, much love.”

Clarke elbows her in the ribs, settling next to her on the small couch and trying to soak up the warmth that is Raven Reyes, practically her best friend. Wells has the honorary best best friend spot, even though Raven claims that she fights him over it all the time.

“So, how’s Europe? Still old, moldy and really stuck up?”

“Yeah, no,” Clarke rolls her eyes. “It’s pretty cool, actually. They’ve got wicked technical museums and everything.”

“And you went for museums?”

“Nope, just saying. But it was good. I’m ready to do whatever I have to do.”

“Mhm,” Raven says, but she doesn’t sound convinced. “Yeah, okay. Anyways, Wells and I are dating.”

When Clarke shoots her a glare, she shrugs, her ponytail bobbing on her head. Her hair’s gotten longer, her leg is getting better and Clarke missed a lot of things, a lot of improvement, a lot of things she should’ve been here for.

Like her best friend dating her other best friend.

“Figured I should let you know before he does.”

“Did you two bet on who would be the first one to tell me?” Clarke asks wryly, trying to contain her happiness for the two she’s been trying to set up for forever. And it turns out that all she had to do was take a trip to Europe. “Come on, asshole, admit it.”

Raven grins, shark-like and every bit fiery as she is. If people could be compared to natural phenomena, Raven would be a forest fire. Enough spark in her to set the whole world ablaze.

“Maybe.”

When Wells comes in, his smile huge when he spots Clarke curled up on the couch with Raven, the latter stands up and shouts, “I won! Suck it, Jaha!”

And Clarke just knows that all is well with the world.

 

*

It takes them a week before they’ve realized that something’s wrong. And it’s not like Clarke isn’t trying – she is. She keeps telling them about all the things she’d seen; like the musician in the train to Barcelona and the whole wonder that is Montmartre in Paris, but maybe she can’t contain that longing she feels for a village on the coast of Spain where Bellamy’s laughter used to make her heart thrash against her ribcage.

“Spill it, Griffin,” Raven commands as they’re washing the dishes in Wells’ apartment. Wells went to take out the trash and Raven’s been eyeing Clarke all through the dinner so, really, she could’ve expected this.

“Spill what?”

“Spill whatever the fuck is bothering you and don’t even dare tell me everything’s okay. Because,” she hisses, “it is absolutely not and I will fuck up whoever pissed you off.”

Raven would. Raven would absolutely appear on someone’s doorstep in the middle of the night and kick the ever loving shit out of them because they dared to touch her friend.

It’s Raven. That’s how she shows her love.

Well, that and sarcasm.

Wells finds them at a standstill in his kitchen and he unwinds his scarf with a happy smile on his face, “Oh, are we confronting her about whatever’s wrong?”

Clarke sighs, asking her friend wearily, “Are you in on this, too?”

He nods but he at least has the decency to look like he’s sorry about it.

“Alright, I’ll tell you,” she finally agrees, drying off the last plate and setting it on the rack. “But you need to get me more wine.”

 

They get her two bottles and order her to tell them whatever’s wrong. Somewhere in the middle of the story about not wanting to get hurt, affection for her friends blossoms in Clarke’s chest. She’s been gone for a long time and they could’ve acted like strangers but instead, they’re sitting next to her on the couch, Raven is handing her tissues when she stumbles through the last few words and the last few glasses of wine, and Wells looks like he’s about to burst into tears as well.

“I’m crying because I’m angry,” she tells them, hiccupping. “Not because I’m sad.”

Raven places a comforting hand on her shoulder, a sorrowful expression on her face. “You’re crying because you’re stupid, you fucking shitweasel.”

“Thanks, Raven,” Clarke grunts. “You’re such a good friend.”

“I’m telling you the truth. You had a good guy there and everything was going alright, wasn’t it? But you chickened out. That’s what you did, Griffin. You chickened out.”

It’s not like Clarke doesn’t know it. It’s clear to her that she could’ve had a good thing had it not been for her fear of being abandoned again. That happens. She’s seen even what seemed like the best of relationships fall apart because people wake up in the morning and decide that they aren’t in love anymore.

It’s just that leaving seemed like a good idea at the time. Right now, all she wants to do is cough while lighting up a 50 cent cigar to see Bellamy laugh at her but get her a glass of water nevertheless.

“Raven is right, Clarke,” Wells says quietly but there’s no tact needed, not really. She knows she’s made a mistake. There’s just no going back now.

If she could, though – if she could go back, she’d go back to the exact second when her stomach plummeted as Bellamy casually said, “I really fucking love you” just because she said a bad joke. Just like that, like it isn’t that big of a deal.

But it was.

It was even bigger because she knew that the feeling she couldn’t explain, burrowed deep in her chest and woven in her fingers whenever she touched Bellamy, was love. Love for someone she didn’t even go on a date with, for someone whose life story she knew because it felt like they could do that – spill their secrets, not expecting to see each other ever again.

But after the first night, she asked him if he’d ever seen Figueres and he smiled sleepily, saying that he did but he wouldn’t mind seeing it again. He held her hand as they roamed around Salvador Dali’s museum and she told him to buckle his seatbelt because Spanish drivers are a health hazard.

The stakes became too high and she chickened out.

“What do I do?” she finally asks, voice laced with desperation. When Wells cracks a smile and Raven pats her on the shoulder, it feels like everything might just be okay.

“You tell him, of course,” Wells says.

“I can’t just – I don’t even have his _number_.”

And then it dawns on her. She doesn’t have his number, she has his e-mail address but she knows his Spanish address. And knows that he’s supposed to stay there until December.

Which is enough for Wells to drive her to the airport and for Clarke to max out her credit card buying a ticket for the first plane to Barcelona. It’s enough to make her smile like a mad woman as she makes her way towards the little town that was their everything, and it’s enough to tip the bus driver with the last five euros she’s got.

It’s not enough to knock on his door, though, not after seeing the e-mail he’d sent her. ‘I hope you got home safe.’ Somehow, everything has been a dream up to this point, even her conversation with the driver of the last bus towards Malaga, in which she pretended that her grandmother was sick and she really had to get a seat on that bus.

But to stand in front of the wooden door with her fist raised, ready to knock on it – it’s as if all of her courage had seeped out, leaving her only empty and doubting. What if he’s not there, what if he doesn’t care, what if someone else opens the door, someone who’d only have a sheet wrapped around their body and who’d say that Bellamy is asleep?

What if everything bad that can happen happens?

And does Clarke even deserve the luck she’s had?

She’s almost about to turn around and walk away, beg for free sangria in that café they met each other, when the door opens and something sends her flying to the floor.

“What the-“

“Fuck!”

It takes her a while to gather her bearings, with pain in her left shoulder that can only mean there’s going to be a bruise in the morning, and then she realizes that Bellamy has landed on top of her and is now looking at her with a strange mixture of fondness and anger.

His hair is just a little longer and he looks as if he hasn’t shaved for days but it’s a good look on him. Everything is and Clarke barely manages to stop herself from kissing him right then and there.

“Hi,” she breathes out, watching his features soften. “I got on a plane _and_ on a bus for a grand romantic gesture. You ruined it.”

There’s a second in which Bellamy looks surprised and then he lets out a laugh, deep and rumbling, reverberating in her chest where it’s pressed to his. The weight is familiar, the lightness she feels next to him is even more comforting.

“I’m so sorry,” he finally says, eyes crinkled with laughter as Clarke tries to keep a straight face. “Do you want to do it again? You can knock and everything.”

“Nah. I just wanted you to know.”

His smile turns into a smirk as his arms cage her in, lifting his weight off of her. “Consider me impressed.”

Even though her cheeks are burning up and she’s definitely not cool – if anything, she’s flustered and two seconds away from bumbling, but. It’s Bellamy. Somehow, he’s the one who knows the worst parts of her life and he still stayed around.

It’s hard not to feel like there’s no pretense needed next to him.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry I left and I’m sorry I told you that this wasn’t real. Because it was. It was real enough to make me leave because I was afraid. And that’s it. It’s no explanation, it’s no excuse, but – “

“Okay.”

“Okay?” she parrots, incredulous. Bellamy just shrugs, as much as he can with trying not to squish her.

“I was angry because you left me without an explanation but I’m in love with you. And if I don’t risk it for Clarke Griffin turning romantic for me, what am I gonna risk it for?”

Clarke decides to risk it, too. It’s worth it. And even if it breaks her heart in the end, every second – whether laughter, whether tears – it’s good, as long as it’s spent with Bellamy.

In the end, it turns out that it doesn’t break her heart. And even though she’d never expected it to be like that, Clarke finds her home thousands of miles away from the place where she was born.

But it’s hers. Bellamy is her home and, really, she wouldn’t have it any other way. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Alright! I basically said everything there was to know in the beginning notes but let me reiterate - I love Spain, I love travelling, I love Bellarke and it made sense. If it didn't, I'm really very sorry.
> 
> And if it did make sense to you - please let me know. Kudos and comments are my fave, all of you are amazing for reading this fic and I'll forever be grateful!
> 
> Have a very happy and successful New Year! :D
> 
> p.s. i'm also on [tumblr](http://marauders-groupie.tumblr.com).


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